This shot took me about an hour to get perfect. Funny thing i was talking to someone walking on the beach while this was going off lol. Talk about getting sidetracked.
Only editing i did was lighten up the picture and a little saturation.Software used was Photoshop CS5. A little dodge and burn and brought down the exposure.

I found this outstanding article on www.picturecorrect.com I came across from photographer Paul Brown. Make sure you checkout the video at the end hilarious.

Photo captured by Tatiana Garanina (Click Image to See More From Tatiana Garanina)

Before I go into what the requirements are on the wedding day from a second photographer, it would be a good idea to think about what should be considered before the day.

First things first, you may be someone who is trying to get work as a second photographer to get started in the industry before launching into a wedding as a lead photographer.

This can often be difficult so be prepared to travel to an area outside what would be considered your territory. Photographers are business people and are always wary of training a competitor, but they may also be looking for a regular second who they can trust and work with.

Find out about the principal photographer’s style. The main photographer will have been booked based on things such as style of images, personality and customer service. So it would be sensible to find out a bit about the lead. Find out their dress code and be respectful of it even if it is not your normal dress code. Prepare your equipment, make sure it is clean, batteries charged, cards formatted if using your own and find out if the principal photographer requires your cameras time to be synchronized.

So on the day, make sure you are very punctual, fairly obvious really, but if it is somewhere you haven’t been before do a bit of preparation to know the area. Google street mapping is often a useful tool for research and during my time as a wedding photographer in Lancashire, it has proven to be invaluable. Then comes the time meeting the wedding party for the first time. Be confident, polite and respectful to everyone, including other vendors that are part of the day. You may be thinking this is all obvious, but little things can often be forgotten when nerves and pressure kick in.

Now we come to the working side of the day and I will break these down to bullet points. There may be other things that can be added to the list, but these are the ones that I consider important.

Be an assistant to the main photographer. Running errands, gathering guests for groups, moving kit around, watching kit, hold reflectors, flashes, video lights and generally any task that is asked of you.

Get the shots you are asked to get and inform the lead when you have them.

Take the camera away from your eyes and look around for the reportage shots, kids playing, different angles that can make a shot look natural and details that the main photographer may not see.

Watch for things that the main photographer may miss, background distractions is one example.

Get detail shots that may be of use for album design as background images.

“Karina & Roman” captured by Elena Zotova (Click Image to See More From Elena Zotova)

Be prepared to take the lead in the event of main photographer having to break away. This may be the scary part, but act with confidence and it will be fine.

Be aware of what the main photographers plans are, remind him/her if you think something has been missed. It will be appreciated that you are showing you are thinking about what is happening.

Finally for the ‘to do’s, think ahead. If you think the need for a reflector is coming, get it to hand, if you know the need for a tripod is coming, get it and extend the legs in preparation, but most importantly, learn something every time and enjoy it. You will be part of a team so make sure you work that way.

If you have your own photography business, don’t give out your cards or try and drum up your own business. They are not your clients and that is to be respected at all times.

Do not shoot like the paparazzi unless you are specifically told to. The main photographer would rather a smaller set of well executed, high quality shots than a thousand shots taken in the hope of 20% being successful.

Do not just shoot over the shoulder of the main photographer to get some portfolio shots unless permission has been gained. It can be very off putting if it hasn’t been discussed. If it has been agreed in advance, then the main photographer will have just to inform clients that some training is taking place.

Do not publish images on blogs etc without permission from the main photographer. If permission is given, credit the main photographer. The copyright remains with the photographer/business that you are working for.

Do not chew gum, smoke, drink alcohol, swear etc if that is what is requested by the main photographer.

“Olga” captured by Olesia Kliots (Click Image to See More From Olesia Kliots)

So these are just a few of the basic things to be considered and this list can be added to. So hopefully this may be of help to some and that it will help you to be an asset if you are a second shooter at any time.

Check outDigital Wedding Secrets;a very popular and comprehensive instructional eBook package for aspiring wedding photographers and has guidance on virtually everything needed to start a professional wedding photography business. With 189 pages of information and many other materials such as shot lists and sample contract templates, there is immense value here for any level of photographer interested in wedding photography.

A word of guidance…Their website is a little obnoxious to navigate – you’ll see what I mean. But I have found them to have the best wedding photography training package. Their free eBook that comes with the newsletter is a little helpful, but the primary ebook package and all it’s extras are a lot more useful and actionable.

Learning about Exposure – The Exposure Triangle

Bryan Peterson has written a book titled Understanding Exposure which is a highly recommended read if you’re wanting to venture out of the Auto mode on your digital camera and experiment with it’s manual settings.

In it Bryan illustrates the three main elements that need to be considered when playing around with exposure by calling them ‘the exposure triangle’.

Each of the three aspects of the triangle relate to light and how it enters and interacts with the camera.

The three elements are:

It is at the intersection of these three elements that an image’s exposure is worked out.

Most importantly – a change in one of the elements will impact the others. This means that you can never really isolate just one of the elements alone but always need to have the others in the back of your mind.

Many people describe the relationship between ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed using different metaphors to help us get our heads around it. Let me share three. A quick word of warning first though – like most metaphors – these are far from perfect and are just for illustrative purposes:

Imagine your camera is like a window with shutters that open and close.

Aperture is the size of the window. If it’s bigger more light gets through and the room is brighter.

Shutter Speed is the amount of time that the shutters of the window are open. The longer you leave them open the more that comes in.

Now imagine that you’re inside the room and are wearing sunglasses (hopefully this isn’t too much of a stretch). Your eyes become desensitized to the light that comes in (it’s like a low ISO).

There are a number of ways of increasing the amount of light in the room (or at least how much it seems that there is. You could increase the time that the shutters are open (decrease shutter speed), you could increase the size of the window (increase aperture) or you could take off your sunglasses (make the ISO larger).

Another way that a friend recently shared with me is to think about digital camera exposure as being like getting a sun tan.

Now getting a suntan is something I always wanted growing up – but unfortunately being very fair skinned it was something that I never really achieved. All I did was get burnt when I went out into the sun. In a sense your skin type is like an ISO rating. Some people are more sensitive to the sun than others.

Shutter speed in this metaphor is like the length of time you spend out in the sun. The longer you spend in the sun the increased chances of you getting a tan (of course spending too long in the sun can mean being over exposed).

Aperture is like sunscreen which you apply to your skin. Sunscreen blocks the sun at different rates depending upon it’s strength. Apply a high strength sunscreen and you decrease the amount of sunlight that gets through – and as a result even a person with highly sensitive skin can spend more time in the sun (ie decrease the Aperture and you can slow down shutter speed and/or decrease ISO).

As I’ve said – neither metaphor is perfect but both illustrate the interconnectedness of shutter speed, aperture and ISO on your digital camera.

Update: A third metaphor that I’ve heard used is the Garden Hose (the width of the hose is aperture, the length that the hose is left on is shutter speed and the pressure of the water (the speed it gets through) is ISO.

Bringing It All Together

Mastering the art of exposure is something that takes a lot of practice. In many ways it’s a juggling act and even the most experienced photographers experiment and tweak their settings as they go. Keep in mind that changing each element not only impacts the exposure of the image but each one also has an impact upon other aspects of it (ie changing aperture changes depth of field, changing ISO changes the graininess of a shot and changing shutter speed impacts how motion is captured).

The great thing about digital cameras is that they are the ideal testing bed for learning about exposure. You can take as many shots as you like at no cost and they not only allow you to shoot in Auto mode and Manual mode – but also generally have semi-automatic modes like aperture priority and shutter priority modes which allow you to make decisions about one or two elements of the triangle and let the camera handle the other elements.

Nicole and I Wanted to get some pictures up of our new family actually the two children. Surprisingly they came out real nice I especially like how Isabella and Dominic’s pictures together we’re so easy to take. Its nice doing children photography and newborn photography and the kids are easy to get along with. The equipment I used was one off camera flash and a reflector to fill in the right side of the children’s faces. Because there was allot of ambient light. The flash really boosted Isabella’s eyes and softened her face. I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and great new year. Check out our website Kevin and Nicole Photography

I’m so proud to announce the birth of our newborn son Dominic Jason-Joseph Bucchio. So as a treat Nicole and I decided to do some newborn photography for everyone to see. Newborn Photography is easy to do whenever your children is sleeping like Dominic was. Dominic is such a ham he was born on November, 18th, 2011. His weight was 7lbs. 8oz. length was 20 1/4 inches long and of course full of life. Part of being a Melbourne, Florida photographer and father is being able to photograph your children all the time. Nicole had to be induced a week early. If she went full term we could of had Dominic on thanksgiving. Nicole and I have alot to be thankful for this year. We moved to Melbourne, Florida, the Boston Bruins won the stanley cup, Nicole got a new car, we also got an awesome apartment, and finally a newborn baby Dominic. Please enjoy our bundle of joy and the photographs.

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas… and in our forums I’ve noticed more and more great Christmas images being shared – some of which feature a technique that is always popular at this time of year – Bokeh Christmas lights shots.

The technique takes a bit of experimenting and practice but is relatively simple to do. You need some Christmas lights and a camera lens with a reasonably ‘fast’ aperture (or a large aperture).

The key is to shoot at the larger end of your available aperture – this throws the background (and foreground) of your shot out of focus and any Christmas lights in the foreground or background will become little balls of light.

As you’ll see in most of the images featured in this series – the technique is particularly good if you also have some element in your shot that is in focus. This ‘subject’ might be a person, a pet, a Christmas decoration or something else.

You can make the little balls of light bigger by increasing the distance between your in focus subject and the out of focus lights in the background.

While most of the images in this series have the Christmas lights in the background of the image (behind the subject) it is also possible to create the little bokeh balls of light by putting the lights in the foreground of your image (in front of your subject). You can see this in the image below. The impact is a little different as the bokeh balls will cover part of your subject.

Another popular technique is to create different shaped bokeh. You can make stars, hearts or even little snow flakes like the image below.

The other way to change the shape of your bokeh balls is to experiment with different apertures. You’ll find that in most cases the larger your aperture the rounder the ball – but go for a slightly smaller aperture you may find your bokeh becomes more hexagonal (or Heptagonal or Octagonal… the number of sides will depend upon how many blades your lens has).

The different ways of using this bokeh Christmas lights technique is only limited by your imagination. Here are some more examples to give you ideas. Enjoy!

I’m very proud to announce that I’ve become an uncle for the second time. My sister Erica gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named Elijah. So as a favor Nicole and I told Erica that we’d take some Newborn photographs of Elijah. The photo shoot went awesome Baby Elijah was very quiet and easy. Erica was really impressed with our previous newborn photography photos so she was enthusiastic. Nicole and I couldn’t believe how content Elijah was during the whole photo shoot. First, we got a few regular newborn photography poses out of the way. Secondly, we shot some different wide angles trying to use my creative side in newborn photography. Finally, we did a couple of photographs of Elijah in a cute hat that Erica wanted us to use. Here at Kevin and Nicole Photography we always want the subject to pop out and work around it by not using many distractions from the focal point. So we wanted Elijah to be the main focus and by accomplishing this we shot Elijah in black and white. Lastly, the photo shoot of Elijah Mensch took about a half hour and using my lighting equipment and Stratta ii triggers along with my flash units we accomplished beautiful lighting inside Erica’s house.